Clearly it is time for an update. I don't know why it's so hard for me to remember to write here this time around, but I really will try to be better about it.
Last week, some tensions emerged in the house, and it was pretty unpleasant for a few days. As a result, I was forced out of the house to explore on my own a bit over the weekend, which actually ended up being a good thing. Things in the house are back to somewhat normal-ish, or at least appear to be so for everyone's sake, thankfully.
Saturday last week was Youth Day. It's a public holiday that commemorates the Soweto Uprisings in 1976, which was a major turning point in the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. The apartheid government had already set out a 'Bantu' curriculum, specifically geared to under-educated black South Africans to prepare them for menial jobs and prevent them from aspiring to anything better, but in 1976, they imposed a new law requiring the use of the Afrikaans language for half the lessons in Bantu schools. Afrikaans was seen as the 'language of the oppressor,' and perhaps worse, black students didn't speak Afrikaans, so they couldn't understand their lessons. It all erupted on 16 June 1976, when thousands of students in Soweto (the big township/collection of townships outside Johannesburg) attended a peaceful protest against the language policy. The police turned out in full force, some of the students started to throw stones, and the police opened fire.
One of the first victims was 13-year-old Hector Pieterson, who wasn't participating in the march. He happened to be walking through and got hit by a stray bullet. The photo of his body being carried away, with his sister in tears trailing next to him, is one of the best-known images in South Africa and became the symbol of the students' resistance in Soweto.
There is a similar holiday -- Women's Day -- on 9 August to commemorate when women marched en masse against pass laws under apartheid. Usually we get public holidays off. And if Youth Day had been on a Sunday, we would have had Monday off. But since it was on a Saturday... we got nothing. I thought about going into Soweto, but a group of people, including the one with whom there was tension, were doing that, so I sat it out.
What I ended up doing was going to meet the residence manager at Nkosi's Haven, which is an NGO that offers care to HIV-infected mothers, their children and AIDS orphans. It's named after (and was founded by) Nkosi Johnson, one of the most famous HIV-infected South Africans. He was born HIV-positive in the late 1980s and was separated from his mother because she was too sick to care for him, adopted by a social worker who was taking care of her. He was a fierce little AIDS activist until he died in 2001, at the age of 12. The goal of the organization is to keep infected mothers and their children together, and to provide care for the residents for as long as possible. The woman I met with seemed to think I was a medical student, so I somehow got talked into trying out working in the sick bay and helping to prepare the antiretrovirals for the two kids who are currently ill enough to need to take them, but I don't think that's going to work long-term. I'm going out for the first time tomorrow, so we'll see what happens.
On Sunday, I went to a market on the roof of the Rosebank Mall near my office. That sounds weird, and I was skeptical, but it was actually quite fantastic. It's the whole roof of the mall, and it's sort of like three or four separate markets squished into one. It's got an international food court, and part of it is a typical African curio/craft market, but part of it is also an antiques market. There are also really random things -- one guy was like a walking infomercial, trying to sell me a hanger that would give me more space in my closet. There are also used book stalls, and in one corner there are actual artists (as opposed to the 'artists' who sell you the same manufactured 'African art' that's exactly the same at every market you go to) with really beautiful work. It reminded me quite forcibly of Reading Terminal Market, actually.
I walked in on the end with the food (of course) and walked straight towards the sign that said 'chili fudge.' There were free samples -- hallelujah! -- and I had a fairly educational fudge tasting experience. It was like wine tasting, but with fudge. The guy was like, first you'll taste this, but then this flavor will come out, and then you'll practically smell this, and I was like -- uh huh, sure. But he was right! I never knew fudge could be so complicated. I ended up buying a flavor called 'Kentucky julip,' which he didn't have out to taste, but the combination of lemon, mint and whiskey had me intrigued. Turns out you can't taste the whiskey at all, but it's still really, really good.
Anyway, I wondered around and got Asian food and managed not to really buy anything. But it was really fun and relaxing.
On Monday night, a group of us went to trivia night in Orange Grove. We were mostly Americans on the team, and there were a gazillion rounds, and we managed to win 2 of the rounds and did rather dismally over all. I got yelled at a lot for saying the answers too loudly, although I honestly don't think any of the other tables were listening or could hear me. And/or I think the individuals who were taking me to task for being too loud were maybe taking the trivia night a teensy bit too seriously. BUT it was fun anyway.
Last night, I went with Becki (the English housemate who's getting her PhD in public health) and the two American public health students she's supervising this summer to see a documentary at the Bioscope Independent Cinema in downtown Johannesburg. We got fantastically lost on the way there, because I didn't have the GPS and Becki doesn't know her way around in town, but we did make it -- at least partially thanks to my navigational skills, if you can believe it. I almost screwed it up in the end though, so any help I may have offered in the middle, I basically undid. The world as we know it continues.
I've been to the Bioscope a couple times now. It's really a very cool venue.... I'm going to cheat and use Google images, since I have taken no photos of my own. It's this tiny, hip little place that only ever has maybe 8 or 9 people at its films/documentaries, but it shows really fantastic things. Everything I've seen there has been great.
Last night, we went to see a documentary called Fire in the Blood. It was about the struggle to get affordable, accessible antiretroviral drugs into the hands of the AIDS patients who needed them in the developing world. Basically, the big pharmaceutical companies were selling the drugs for $15,000 a year, which obviously is well beyond the reach of people living even on the average income in a place like South Africa (which is wildly wealthier than most of Africa). And since the vast majority of AIDS patients have always been in Africa, people were just dying. ARVs came on the market in 1996, and millions of people died in the developing world after that simply because pharmaceutical companies (and the US government, which is desperately beholden to them) are greedy and heartless. The documentary went through all the challenges people like my old boss in Cape Town, Zackie Achmat, and other really brave pioneers in Uganda and India went through to break through the patents and the pressures and basically break the laws to get drugs into the hands of people who were dying because they were poor.
It was a very well-done documentary, and it reminded me of a conversation I had last year with an American AIDS activist about one possible nexus between the law and public health I can pursue -- because it's not as though this issue has gone away. The Indian companies are making generics for the drugs on the market now, but TRIPS was forced through by pharma companies specifically to stop something like this happening again. So when new TB drugs (which are desperately needed), or new ARVs come along, this whole battle is going to start over again, but with the international law much more firmly on the side of big pharma. So I'm now desperately thinking about how I can learn everything I need to know about patents and international intellectual property law in one year of law school. Yikes.
Anyway. Driving in Joburg CBD (Central Business District) is not fun, but coming back into Rosebank is lovely, because we cross the Nelson Mandela Bridge at night. The bridge is beautiful anyway, but at night it lights up. I can't really find pictures to do it justice, but here are some that might give you an idea --
Sandeep and Melissa have gone to Durban for the weekend, so I'm left to entertain myself again. But I am going to Nkosi's Haven tomorrow, so that should take up at least part of my time. I really hope it goes well, and that no one is mad at me that I can't stay in the sick bay permanently. I just want to play with some kids!
Last week, some tensions emerged in the house, and it was pretty unpleasant for a few days. As a result, I was forced out of the house to explore on my own a bit over the weekend, which actually ended up being a good thing. Things in the house are back to somewhat normal-ish, or at least appear to be so for everyone's sake, thankfully.
Saturday last week was Youth Day. It's a public holiday that commemorates the Soweto Uprisings in 1976, which was a major turning point in the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. The apartheid government had already set out a 'Bantu' curriculum, specifically geared to under-educated black South Africans to prepare them for menial jobs and prevent them from aspiring to anything better, but in 1976, they imposed a new law requiring the use of the Afrikaans language for half the lessons in Bantu schools. Afrikaans was seen as the 'language of the oppressor,' and perhaps worse, black students didn't speak Afrikaans, so they couldn't understand their lessons. It all erupted on 16 June 1976, when thousands of students in Soweto (the big township/collection of townships outside Johannesburg) attended a peaceful protest against the language policy. The police turned out in full force, some of the students started to throw stones, and the police opened fire.
One of the first victims was 13-year-old Hector Pieterson, who wasn't participating in the march. He happened to be walking through and got hit by a stray bullet. The photo of his body being carried away, with his sister in tears trailing next to him, is one of the best-known images in South Africa and became the symbol of the students' resistance in Soweto.
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| Photograph by Sam Nzima |
What I ended up doing was going to meet the residence manager at Nkosi's Haven, which is an NGO that offers care to HIV-infected mothers, their children and AIDS orphans. It's named after (and was founded by) Nkosi Johnson, one of the most famous HIV-infected South Africans. He was born HIV-positive in the late 1980s and was separated from his mother because she was too sick to care for him, adopted by a social worker who was taking care of her. He was a fierce little AIDS activist until he died in 2001, at the age of 12. The goal of the organization is to keep infected mothers and their children together, and to provide care for the residents for as long as possible. The woman I met with seemed to think I was a medical student, so I somehow got talked into trying out working in the sick bay and helping to prepare the antiretrovirals for the two kids who are currently ill enough to need to take them, but I don't think that's going to work long-term. I'm going out for the first time tomorrow, so we'll see what happens.
On Sunday, I went to a market on the roof of the Rosebank Mall near my office. That sounds weird, and I was skeptical, but it was actually quite fantastic. It's the whole roof of the mall, and it's sort of like three or four separate markets squished into one. It's got an international food court, and part of it is a typical African curio/craft market, but part of it is also an antiques market. There are also really random things -- one guy was like a walking infomercial, trying to sell me a hanger that would give me more space in my closet. There are also used book stalls, and in one corner there are actual artists (as opposed to the 'artists' who sell you the same manufactured 'African art' that's exactly the same at every market you go to) with really beautiful work. It reminded me quite forcibly of Reading Terminal Market, actually.
I walked in on the end with the food (of course) and walked straight towards the sign that said 'chili fudge.' There were free samples -- hallelujah! -- and I had a fairly educational fudge tasting experience. It was like wine tasting, but with fudge. The guy was like, first you'll taste this, but then this flavor will come out, and then you'll practically smell this, and I was like -- uh huh, sure. But he was right! I never knew fudge could be so complicated. I ended up buying a flavor called 'Kentucky julip,' which he didn't have out to taste, but the combination of lemon, mint and whiskey had me intrigued. Turns out you can't taste the whiskey at all, but it's still really, really good.
Anyway, I wondered around and got Asian food and managed not to really buy anything. But it was really fun and relaxing.
On Monday night, a group of us went to trivia night in Orange Grove. We were mostly Americans on the team, and there were a gazillion rounds, and we managed to win 2 of the rounds and did rather dismally over all. I got yelled at a lot for saying the answers too loudly, although I honestly don't think any of the other tables were listening or could hear me. And/or I think the individuals who were taking me to task for being too loud were maybe taking the trivia night a teensy bit too seriously. BUT it was fun anyway.
Last night, I went with Becki (the English housemate who's getting her PhD in public health) and the two American public health students she's supervising this summer to see a documentary at the Bioscope Independent Cinema in downtown Johannesburg. We got fantastically lost on the way there, because I didn't have the GPS and Becki doesn't know her way around in town, but we did make it -- at least partially thanks to my navigational skills, if you can believe it. I almost screwed it up in the end though, so any help I may have offered in the middle, I basically undid. The world as we know it continues.
I've been to the Bioscope a couple times now. It's really a very cool venue.... I'm going to cheat and use Google images, since I have taken no photos of my own. It's this tiny, hip little place that only ever has maybe 8 or 9 people at its films/documentaries, but it shows really fantastic things. Everything I've seen there has been great.
Last night, we went to see a documentary called Fire in the Blood. It was about the struggle to get affordable, accessible antiretroviral drugs into the hands of the AIDS patients who needed them in the developing world. Basically, the big pharmaceutical companies were selling the drugs for $15,000 a year, which obviously is well beyond the reach of people living even on the average income in a place like South Africa (which is wildly wealthier than most of Africa). And since the vast majority of AIDS patients have always been in Africa, people were just dying. ARVs came on the market in 1996, and millions of people died in the developing world after that simply because pharmaceutical companies (and the US government, which is desperately beholden to them) are greedy and heartless. The documentary went through all the challenges people like my old boss in Cape Town, Zackie Achmat, and other really brave pioneers in Uganda and India went through to break through the patents and the pressures and basically break the laws to get drugs into the hands of people who were dying because they were poor.
It was a very well-done documentary, and it reminded me of a conversation I had last year with an American AIDS activist about one possible nexus between the law and public health I can pursue -- because it's not as though this issue has gone away. The Indian companies are making generics for the drugs on the market now, but TRIPS was forced through by pharma companies specifically to stop something like this happening again. So when new TB drugs (which are desperately needed), or new ARVs come along, this whole battle is going to start over again, but with the international law much more firmly on the side of big pharma. So I'm now desperately thinking about how I can learn everything I need to know about patents and international intellectual property law in one year of law school. Yikes.
Anyway. Driving in Joburg CBD (Central Business District) is not fun, but coming back into Rosebank is lovely, because we cross the Nelson Mandela Bridge at night. The bridge is beautiful anyway, but at night it lights up. I can't really find pictures to do it justice, but here are some that might give you an idea --
Sandeep and Melissa have gone to Durban for the weekend, so I'm left to entertain myself again. But I am going to Nkosi's Haven tomorrow, so that should take up at least part of my time. I really hope it goes well, and that no one is mad at me that I can't stay in the sick bay permanently. I just want to play with some kids!
Great posting Katie. As always. Hope all thw house "tension" has calmed down. I don't know how you manage so many house-mates. I couldn't even handle sharing a dorm room in grad school! Gotta say though - and I'm a real fudge lover - the flavors you tasted and the one you bought sound HORRIBLE! Give you credit for being adventurous! xoxo ESA
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